Treasure Decks: Easy To Play and Winning Mono Red

Today’s focus is building off of my last article, in which you rush the player with as much low cost warriors and one cost enchantments to do as much damage as early as possible to keep the balance in your favor. However, this time instead of racing to get a 6/4 on the board by turn four, we are going to focus on getting five treasure tokens on the board by turn four, thus allowing you to play literally whatever you want.

The Specs

For our purposes we are going to stick with a mono red, in that you are only going to pack red lands. You can, by all means, put multi color cards in this deck as treasure can be spent as many sources of mana but our intention is to stick with red. Some of the most important cards in this deck will be: Sticky Fingers, Xorn, Hoarding Ogre, Blade Historian, Goldvein pick, Fake Your Death, Sudden Breakthrough, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Kalain Reclusive Painter, Goma Fada Vanguard, and Karagan Intimidator. These are the crucial cards, the ones you will need if your goal is to get as much mana as you possibly want. From there it’s up to you what way you will style the deck. And I don’t say that in an attempt to be lazy, but in the sense that now that you have a deck core that will shit out as much mana as possible, you must decide what you will want to spend it on. You could spend it on cards that are normally so expensive that they only see action in commander decks, you could spend it on pumping out low-cost cards, or you can use it so that you’ll always have mana for those instants that will let you control their actions. Here’s complete deck sample:

treasure-deck-724be

Glaring Weakness

So the glaring weakness of this deck is twofold. One, you are not building towards anything in particular like with my old article of the elf deck you were always building towards either a deathtouch board-wipe, or the Skemfar Shadowsage wombo combo. Two, your early game development may be a bit slow so it’s a good idea to pack those red spells that are notorious for making early game building a pain in the ass. The truth of this deck is, without some board wipe spells there is no way to bounce back from building late. I’ve played with this deck combination for about a week and a half, and have climbed through Platinum rank doing so, though there are duels where I am forced to concede because they already have everything, they prevent my treasure generation. Goma Vanguard and Karagan Intimidator are there in the deck so that if you get stuck in this situation you can prevent certain cards from defending, thus opening you up to generate those tokens but this only works if you and your opponent are neck and neck with creatures on the board.

Obvious Strengths

Now why would I waste my time telling you what the strengths of this deck are when they’re supposed to be “obvious”? That’s easy. Because once you confirm how this deck kicks ass, then you can focus on the ways in which it could kick ass. Like I said this deck style is interactive due to the fact I am giving you a formula to crap out treasure. It’s up to you to determine how to best spend that treasure. From my own experience I love using this deck to pack as many instants and sorceries that give me the sensation that I am playing a blue control deck. Especially since nobody will want to make a move and risk losing what little they have left when the last three turns you’ve mucked up their plans in some fashion and you still have five mana left in the form of treasures while it’s their turn. Naturally, I’ll include the full deck that I run with the treasure component as its core, but I highly advise you all to play jazz with this deck. Make three copies and fill each with a different color or strategy and then hit friendly matches to see which works best for you. I had a friend do the same and he ended up doing a red-blue deck where he got to copy every spell he casted and choose new targets, so he packed as many Sudden Breakthroughs and Fake your Death as he could. You could also use this deck to cast Unnatural Growth which normally never sees the field due to its outrageous cost, but has obvious advantages. Another great possible strat is to pack as many enchaments and ehancements as possible and use your treasure tokens to make your low cost cards beefy. If you choose to do this route, I recommend Akkai War Paint, Angelfire Ignition, Maul of the Skyclaves, or anything that gives you flying because this deck is dead in the water if you can’t actually land the hits to generate the treasure tokens you need.

Ideal Build

You’ll know if you’ve perfected this deck if you play five or six games where by turn five or six you have three treasure tokens and five lands. At that point, so long as your hand is good, then you’ll be able to play cards that would normally appear by turn ten or twelve, and not many games last that long in higher ranked plays. Xorn and Hoarding Ogre are probably the most important cards to pack with this strategy as they stand to give you the most treasures. So getting both of them on the board ASAP is highly recommended.

Final Note

While I love to make wacky decks that win in unconventional ways, I will admit that after playing this deck, I had more fun with it in friendly’s than I did in ranked play. Granted I only played it in Plat rank, where fun is hard to encourage, but I could see this deck being equally fun in lower ranks. At the end of the day Magic is a game and all games are meant to entertain. Do I think there is a formula in there that could make this treasure deck something even plat players would dread? Absolutely. Do I think it’s necessary to have all your games end in them conceding? Absolutely not. So play around with this deck, enjoy yourself, and try and find all the ways hoarding treasure tokens can break a game. Happy dueling and don’t forget to pack your lands!